Google Product Ads - Improving our Cost Per Conversion?

[complete_outdoors]

Hi all,

We have been running Google Product Ads (paid for) ever since it began in the UK. We are still struggling to get to grips with the best way to make it worthwhile for us.

Our data for the last 14 days:
Clicks: 1827
Impressions: 65789
CTR: 2.78%
Average CPC: £0.22
Cost Per Conversion: £15.13

We've added some auto targets for our most popular brands, with a higher CPC than "all products". We've also added negative keywords so we only come up with relevant searches.

Basically, what we'd like to know is: how we can best set-up our product ads to reduce our Cost Per Conversion (I guess everyone would like to do that!), as it is barely worth us using it currently.

If you require any further data to help answer my question, please ask.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[EGOL]

Basically, what we'd like to know is: how we can best set-up our product ads to reduce our Cost Per Conversion (I guess everyone would like to do that!), as it is barely worth us using it currently.

Just some quick things to consider....

A) There is much more to this than "ads".  The conversion rate of your landing page could be more important than your ads.  Spend some time improving it.  I got help from SiteTuners.com and they helped me understand landing pages.

B) I write LOTS of ads (ten for a keyword is not unusual) and allow them to compete.  I drop those with low conversion rate.  Experiment. Try crazy stuff.  It might pull traffic and get sales.

C) I download a spreadsheet of keywords and find those that are not converting.  I drop those.  I also use negative keywords to block unproductive and irrelevant.  You can boost your quality score by eliminating unproductive keywords.

D) Find out what your competitors are charging for the products and for shipping.  If you are a high-price seller competing against discounters you are going to blow a load of money on adwords.

E) Adwords is a battle of quality score.  If you start out trying to get cheap clicks your quality score is going to suck.  I go in bidding crazy high to help the quality score and then back off.

[DavidKonigsberg]

I always like to segment the list to gain more control this can be done by brand or manufacturer ,product etc play around with different ways of breaking up the list so you can see what is worthy of spending on and what isnt.

[JMacSupply]

"E) Adwords is a battle of quality score.  If you start out trying to get cheap clicks your quality score is going to suck.  I go in bidding crazy high to help the quality score and then back off."

Can you explain this a little further?  How does your high orignial bid increase the quality score?

Thanks!

[EGOL]

If you go into the auction with a low bid and appear at the bottom of the adwords list your CTR will be very low.  That will damage your quality score.   It can be very difficult to raise your quality score if your CTR has been very low for a long time.

I start out with a bid that will make my ad very visible immediately.  That gives my ad a better chance to be clicked and that higher CTR helps me start out immediately with a better quality score than if I started out bidding low with an ad that is not clicked as often.

[complete_outdoors]

Hi EGOL, thanks for the response.

I think the problem could be a mixture of points A and D. I think we need more of a call to action, maybe a countdown to next dispatch or something. Also on a slightly different note, does anyone know of a tool that uses Google Shopping results to get other prices and tells you what you need to adjust? (Like AppEagle does for Amazon)

Does quality score exist for Google Product Ads, or just adwords keywords? I can't see it in the settings.

[DavidKonigsberg]

This may help you aswell http://ppcchat.co/2013/10/optimizing-google-product-feeds-ppc-chat-streamcap/